When I first got my new laptop, I thought it was very cool. It included a fingerprint reader below the mouse pad. I was excited to start getting myself set up and using that to log in.
But then I started thinking. What if someone hacks my laptop with a trojan of some sort and copies my digital fingerprint? That's the type of information that it might make some sense to steal at some point and keep around. Why I'm not sure, but what if they could use it somehow? What if they could send my fingerprint somewhere to some system that mattered? That's not something I can change, unlike a passcode or a smartcard.
My concern in the editorial was mostly a trust issue, and I hope that came across.
Why did I write this? I got challenged by Andy Warren to write a bit about why I wrote something. I complained to him that he has some "mechanical" posts on this blog that just mention he wrote something with some questions, and don't really blog about why he wrote something. He challenged me to write about why I wrote something, so here I am.
With a large election year in the US (President + all the other races), I've been more interested than in some other years in the election process. I think it's an exciting time in the US with the chance to have a minority or a woman in the White House, something that has never happened before. Over the last couple months I've debated issues with friends, family, the kids have been interested and that's a good thing.
I love my country and I am grateful for the opportunities that it gives me. And I think that I shuld give something back, at least at times. It's important to me to vote every election, and I'm proud to do so. Two years ago when we had a fairly minor race, I took my daughter (then 5) with me to vote before she went to school. She liked it and I had made plans to do it again this year, including my 9 year old as well this time.
As we've talked about the election with the kids, told them how it works, etc., I've been trying to instill in them the importance of respecting your rights and responsibilities in this country, and participating in how things work. I want them to feel pride as well as responsibility to the country and it's gotten me thinking that I should participate more.
That's really the inspiration for this editorial. I didn't want it to be a political piece, or even a patriotic one, but more that the ability, and perhaps responsibility, to participate in those things that affect your life, or go on around you, whether that's work or home or anything else, is something that I hope you feel.
You can't do everything, but you can make a difference. Pick and choose according to what you can do, where your moral compass sits, or what is important to you, but help out when you can and pay it forward whenever you can. I think it's important and I think it comes back to benefit you at some point in life.
I've always been a little bit of a strong DBA. I try to get along and work with people, being flexible about what rules to implement, but I am somewhat of a stickler for rules. As I was browsing through some blogs one week, I found myself reading about that age-old conflict between DBAs and developers, where the DBA is oppressing the freedom of the Developers.That plays out all too often, but in this case I found myself wondering what types of things are really important to DBAs. Why do they expend so much energy enforcing rules. I have my own reasons, but I thought an interesting starting point would be to tackle this as a "What rules are most important" or as I wrote it, what's a DBA absolute?There ended up being some interesting responses, and some I hadn't thought of. One of the most interesting was in teh debate, as a response to someone else, where someone asked about another absolute: Would you be willing to lose or change your jobs because of xx? That was a great question to me, and I hope others realize that if it's an absolute, you would change your job over it. However that's not always practical and could run you into a downward spiral. Most likely our absolutes are really strong feelings, and the extent to which we would enforce them "depends" on the situation more than we'd like.
Late in getting this one out there, but it's interesting to see people's responses. Especially to my story.
As a kid we hear stories that we can do anything if we work hard enough. 35 years later, bum shoulder, bad joints, I realize that talent affects a lot of what we do as well. My dreams of playing sports or music likely wouldn't come true no matter how much I practiced because of the lack of talent. I can accept that, I'm not invincible, and never was.
But that doesn't mean I can't work hard or shouldn't. Physically I've felt a lot better in the last year than I have in the previous 3 or 4. I'm working my body harder and smarter and that's making me wealthier in that aspect of my life.
As far as in business, I've got a couple businesses going (JumpstartTV and End to End Training) and if one of them makes me a bunch of $$, great, if not, they're still doing well. I'll continue with my day job here at SQLServerCentral and I'm likely to always work. Be nice not to have to, but I'm not sure what I'd do with myself if I didn't have to work.
I've had a bunch of writings based on finances over the last couple weeks, and I've tried to spread them out so as not to overwhlem or bore people. Some people don't care and others are so deep they probably think I'm not looking at it enough. And this isn't a financial site.
In any case, my wife and I have talked about it, and we've been watching things. I haven't been too worried since we have a lot of time, but I've talked with friends about it, and they are of mixed opinions. It was during one of these conversations that got me wondering about the tech world and the impact. So I was curious how many people think they affected, are are really affected. If you carry consumer debt, then it might be an issue, or if you have an ARM on your house.
I'm actually wondering what most of my audience thinks about it from people in my field, people that work for a living and are somewhat counting on fund managers and companies to take care of them.
I've always been very concerned about where I work. Well, maybe not always, since early in my career I took jobs just to make more money or get ahead, but once I had kids, when I was about 30, I really started to pay more attention to how I could better enjoy work and find good companies. I think most people strive for that, maybe unconsciously and when it doesn't work out, they don't know what to do.
I try to help people think about this, maybe learn how to better find a job and a company. When I was driving around and heard the commercial for the 2nd or 3rd time, I realized this was a good topic and I thought about a lot of the editorial as I was driving home.
The past few weeks have been a rough one all around the globe as economies aren't doing well. I studied finance and economics in college (along with computer science early on) and so the world of finance and money interests me. I've got a bunch of investments, and so I've been affected quite a bit. If I had to retire in the next year or two, I'd be worried. As it is, with 20 years to work, I think I'll be fine.
When I saw this article, I was not surprised, though I was angry. This is a lot of the reason that we're in this mess. Smart guys thinking they're smarter than they are and are doing a better job analyzing, but also finding loopholes that allow them to make more money. In many ways I'm glad that's not me, and if I hadn't wrecked my shoulder senior year, it might have been.
I grew up in the Cold War, with real concern that the Russians would attack us someday. I wanted to go to the Naval Academy, wanted to be on a submarine, and help defend the US. When I saw Red Dawn as a kid, that was something we thought could happen. Maybe it was a bit of a stretch, but not an outrageous one. The Hunt for Red October defined a lot of what my generation worried about. We really lived the spy world, with people being caught and posturing by governments with real weapons of mass descruction, not like today.
So the idea proposed by Bruce Schneier, which caught my eye since I like his blog and the whole data thing is part of my job, is something that resonates with me. It's something that I thought would be an issue throughout most of my life. I was amazed when the Berlin wall fell down and the Cold War ended.
So this idea, while perhaps not plausible, is something that resonated with me, and I'm sure, a few of you older folks out there.
This one was inspired by an email about what a "database health report" looks like. I wasn't sure, had my own ideas, but I've never really seen a standard one. I asked the author to post in the forums, but I started writing this immediately since I've always been proud of the various proactive reports I've written to keep an eye on how my databases and servers are performing.
I'm not sure I hit this as I struggled a bit with the passion for this subject. The thread kind of went a different way than I would have, since I would focus more on the management side, but since I'm slowly removing myself from the technical side more and more, perhaps that's understandable.
It will be interseting to read what people think.
The recent Business of Software conference in Boston was very inspiring to me. It was a chance to talk business and less technical stuff and I got inspired. This one really started with the reading I've done about 37 Signals over the last few months, but finished as my wife and I were discussing her PMP after she received a renewal notice.
Project management is to some extent, a necessary evil, but it needs to evolve into an assist for developers and not an oppressive tool.
Lately I've been devoting a bit more time to JumpstartTV and End to End Training, not in the actual work, but in the management and brainstorming. It means that my days are busier, but it's interesting. Trying to make them grow has inspired me for quite a few editorials that I'll write over the next few months.
This one started with a discussion about running the business online and stalled. It finally got moving over the last few weeks with a polish after a recent meeting with Andy Warren at the Indy Tech Fest.
I listen and watch sports quite a bit, too much if you ask my wife, but it's a release and it's exciting to me. I heard one of the people on radio talking about the value of two programs and how one spent much less money on their entire program, but had a similar level of success. Not as great, but they spent much less money, so they were a great value.
I like to say I'm always working, and in some sense I am. Every conversation, everything I hear, even sometimes the thoughts as I'm walking to the barn to shovel manure, give me ideas for editorials. I often relate them back to data, though not always. In this case I wondered about the value of systems we by. Do you need speed (performance) or value (budget well spent).
Curious to see what others think.
I got an email from a friend with the article link that's mentioned in the editorial. The email said to read the first page and send him my response, so I promptly read all pages and sent a response back.
As I was reading, I felt quite a few emotions stirring. Frustration with some employees that have worked for me in the past, co-workers that have behaved similar to Eric in the article, and annoyance at the high pay mentioned. I typically haven't known what others are making, so I don't necessarily know if those people I found incompetent or not valuable were making more than me. I was the lowest paid person in my group when I managed a team of DBAs, but since I was the manager that was probably appropriate.
In any case, I thought Eric should be let go, probably after trying to work things out, but I tend to think it's hard to get people to change and if I had to constantly remind him and manage him to change, I'm not sure it's worth it. It's one thing to do that with someone at the bottom of your salary scale, quite another at the top.
As I wrote the editorial, I kept second guessing myself, wondering if I was being too hard, and that made me very curious to see what others would say.
